Unconventional jazz great Jimmy Giuffre gets his due

Jimmy Giuffre was one of jazz's overlooked greats.

A distinctive clarinetist and saxophonist, and a thoughtful composer, Giuffre didn't sell many albums during his life, but his creative restlessness - which resulted in daring, thoughtful music - earned him renown late in his career and after his death. Giuffre didn't pick between rock-influenced fusion and free jazz when they split in the 1960s, nor did he steer his compositions toward pop. His music was improvisational yet melodic, and it influenced generations of jazz men like Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee and Anthony Braxton.

This weekend, three of Houston's finest jazz players will pay tribute to Giuffre's work, in particular the collaborations he did in the 1950s and '60s with guitarist Jim Hall.

Giuffre once wrote "no instrument is nonexpendable." With Hall and bassist Ralph Pena, he formed an innovative trio that dispatched the drums. Each instrumentalist contributed melodies, and the other two beautifully emphasized the pieces with colorful nuance. The mesmerizing music never burned with red-hot tempos but instead sounded contemplative: ballads for the brain.

"Their music didn't get much light shed on it by the jazz-education infrastructure," says bassist Thomas Helton, who put together a trio with saxophonist Woody Witt and guitarist Greg Petito for the upcoming performance. "Their stuff isn't taught. People know Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, but if you bring up the names, they ask, 'Who's Jimmy Giuffre?' 'Who's Jim Hall?' Well, the answer is they were geniuses. And to not give them their due is a crime."

The story of jazz in Texas typically centers on I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth. The city's first black school counts progressive jazz masters like Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, Julius Hemphill, Charles Moffett and Prince Lasha among its alumni.

Giuffre, though, was born in Dallas in 1921, the son of Italian immigrants. Unlike the Fort Worth players, he came to jazz not through blues or R&B but through Woody Herman's big band, for which he composed the standard "Four Brothers."

Giuffre's early records were sweetly melodic. Though his sound aligned him with cool jazz, a West Coast scene, he didn't entirely belong to it. Devoid of the blues, Giuffre's compositions belied an appreciation for European classical music. Giuffre was an understated radical.

"A group without drums is always interesting," Witt says. "The music is very transparent and melodically driven. He was a little more esoteric than a lot of musicians at that time. He made interesting use of different combinations of instrumentation. Some of his music is particularly fun to play in that it's more arranged. Without a drummer, it became more important for him to carry the rhythmic drive in the music."

Giuffre had hinted he wanted to push jazz tradition.

"Every man must go his own way," he told Down Beat magazine in the '50s.

In 1955, he released "Tangents in Jazz," downplaying the bass and drums. Two years later, he told the same magazine, "I'm a trio now," a curious declaration that spoke to Giuffre's interest in instrumental interplay rather than solos.

His 1962 "Free Fall" ventured much further from the well-trod path. "Free Fall" was career suicide: free improvisation between clarinet, bass and piano. It tanked so badly Giuffre couldn't get a record made for nearly a decade. He eventually returned to making new music but received little notice while other performers were slowly catching up to what he'd done years before. Jazz enthusiasts now regard "Free Fall" as a masterpiece.

Giuffre's path remained unique until his death from pneumonia in 2008. Despite its roots in big band, it wound through jazz in a way that also drew admiration from classical composers of his day, including John Cage.

Giuffre's work with Hall - which started in the 1950s and included some collaborations in the '60s - should be in excellent hands this weekend. Nebraska native Witt - a composer, saxophonist and educator - has been a key figure of the city's jazz scene for more than a decade, earning a doctorate from the University of Houston's Moores School of Music. He's released several albums as a leader and also plays with numerous Houston musicians while serving as artistic manager at Cezanne. His many gigs at the club between now and year's end includes a particularly big show Dec. 4 with trumpeter Randy Brecker.

A native Houstonian, Helton typically keeps company with free-improvisational players while serving in the progressive Core Trio. He's a restless listener, which only enriches his work as a instrumentalist and composer. In addition to preparing for the upcoming show, he's preparing for a performance in New York with the Core Trio. They'll play compositions written by legendary bassist Jimmy Garrison, who was a longtime collaborator with Coltrane. And this week, Helton is auditioning for a Pantera cover band because, he says, "I like metal, and I want to play metal. My peers get onto me about practicing this or that. But I like avant garde jazz, Eminem, Stravinsky and pop music. I want it all."

Guitarist Petito, another Houston native, returned to town last year having played in a variety of ensembles spanning jazz, funk, fusion, Latin and pop music.

Their varied backgrounds should nicely align with Giuffre's music, which is melodically rich and interactive. Though Helton prefers modern music, he thinks Giuffre and Hall built their music on concepts that still sound contemporary.

"I'm really drawn to that more melodic and thoughtful type of playing rather than the bombastic stuff that seemed to be the status quo," Helton says. "He worked with players who knew how to contribute interesting parts but who also understood the concept of the group. They knew how to be players who could give themselves to the music instead of making it about themselves. That's so rare in my world. And I think it's something people struggle with a lot today: It's not about how many notes you can play. It's not about being bombastic or clever. It's, 'How can I make this music perfect?' You have to get over yourself to do it. You have to get over your ego. It just makes me want to listen more closely."